In the 14 hundreds spices where very expencive becaues they hade to go from trader to trader all trying to make a profet and by the time they ed Spain and Portugal spices where as expencive as gold. So prince henery the navigator of portugal decided to map a direct route to the spice islands. He started a school of navigation to train sailors and boat designers so a route to the spice islands could be maped and spices would become cheaper. The Spanish where having the saim problem as the Portuagese, spices where to expencive and they decided to navigate there own way to the spice islands. While the Portugise sailed south and round Africa the Spanish whent east intending to find india but they descoverd the americas and called the native peoples indians.
Some explorers from the age of exploration where:

Bartholomew Dias
Bartholomew Dias was a famouse Potugise explorer who was the first known europian exploer to sail beond the cape of good hope. He sailed from Portugal in 1482‍ on a ship called the São Pantaleão. He was going to call it the cape of strorms but the king would not let him because no one would want to sail past it if it had a bad name.

Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus was a Spanish explorer born on 31 October 1451 who is famouse for seting out fom spain in 1492 intending to find india but he ran into the americas. Thinking that he had found India he called the native people indians. He died on 20 May 1506.Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama was a Portugies explorer who was the first europian to sail directly to india in 1497. He reached the spice islands in 1498.‍